Object: Magnetism

12/23/05

By Josef Woodard
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

Befitting an exhibition in which a large share of the art is held together by the mysterious-yet-elemental nature of magnetic energy, Alice Hutchins' new show defies simple description. The story told in "Magnetic Encounters: Alice Hutchins," now at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, is greater, and odder, than the sum of its mostly metal parts.

No small part of the show's charm has to do with the back story and the underlying attitude of the artist herself. Now 90 and a Santa Barbara resident for many years, Hutchins lived in Paris from 1950-80 and was involved in the infamous, post-Dadaist "Fluxus" movement, based in New York City. She was involved in a major exhibition dedicated to the Fluxus movement at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art several years back, but otherwise hasn't been much involved in the local art scene.

Like the late, longtime art celebrity Beatrice Wood (who died in Ojai just shy of her 105th birthday), Hutchins came to art-making relatively late in life, starting to paint at age 40. These artists' undying creative fire would seem to support the idea of late-blooming artist impulses encouraging longevity, and a work ethic closely tied to their life force.

While some of the art in Hutchins' CAF show dates back decades, some of the stronger pieces here -- including "Construct Z" and "Repulsion" -- were made within the last two years. Creative spirit springs eternal and is a renewable energy source.

Long ago, Hutchins gave up painting in favor of a more unique and personal expressive side road of her own devising. She began creating metallic sculptures utilizing the power of magnets to create constructions that could be simultaneous fixed and fluid, hard to the touch and blessed with mass, yet also infinitely malleable.

As curator Merrily Peebles rightly notes in her statement, the appreciative viewer "sees the form and also physically senses the force that holds it together."

The end effect, seen in a broad and delightful range of sculptures here, buzzes with a sensibility both funky and sleek. This is art with tentacles in post-Erector Set ingenuity and post-Constructivist concepts.

It may be a special validation of Hutchins' aesthetic sharpness that her private, magnetized aesthetic is grounded in self-determination and irreverence. Those qualities are seen in small doses, in such nonmagnetic early pieces as a Fluxus-era self-portrait from 1966, with her passport gracefully defaced, and her series of marked-up and appropriated postcards of works at the Louvre. She's not big on venerating sacred art objects or bowing at the altar of art history.

Another aspect of distinction with her magnetic art is that, by its nature, some artworks are actually meant to be touched and manipulated. She gives instructions how to appreciate the energies and the arrangement options involved in a few of the pieces she invites visitors to play with.

The very changeability of her art is nicely illustrated with the DVD production "Plaything," by John Houchin (with a hip, hypnotic soundtrack by Richard Dunlap) playing on a loop in the gallery. He created an abstract animation piece by gradually moving parts in a Hutchins piece.

A caterpillarlike sequence of metal pieces snaking across one wall, "Frieze 2" -- unlike a traditional frieze -- is necessarily semi-site-specific, as the individual parts can be arranged in myriad ways on a wall.

Sometimes, Hutchins comes up with disarming elegant creations fashioned from unlikely materials: "Open-Up," the date of which is given as 1975/2003, is a lovely oddity, made of painted and plated steel, ferrite magnet and wood, and "At This Moment" combines steel rings, a galvanized metal background and a hunk of wood as an earthy base. You sense that she has spent as much time in hardware stores as art supply stores when the muse comes calling.

"A Flux Box (Circuit Box Series)," from 1973, looks like a science fair project run slightly amok, as if an illustration of molecular structure as concocted by a distracted junior scientist. With "When Work is Play," the title offers a key insight to the nature of her art, as much about play as serious formal inquiry.

The primary feeling at CAF, rising like a pleasant mist from the show, is that this venerable yet young-minded artist has located a source of artistic strength. She has consciously steered clear of convention, while firmly adhering to an idea and a means worth pursuing and evolving with. More than any identifiable art world "ism," this work has to do with magnetism, on more than one level

MAGNETIC ENCOUNTERS

When: Through Jan. 22

Where: Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum,

upstairs in Paseo Nuevo

Gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday

Information: 966-5373

JOSEF WOODARD PHOTO
Alice Hutchins' "Frieze 2."